


Negative Space

by TaleWorthTelling



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Anal Sex, Intimacy, M/M, Massage, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-01
Updated: 2016-06-01
Packaged: 2018-07-11 13:41:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,009
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7054075
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TaleWorthTelling/pseuds/TaleWorthTelling
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>God, it had just been so long. So long since he'd been touched, just for the sake of it, not incidental or violent or clinical. Just as Bucky Barnes, with no real purpose, no intent.</em>
</p><p> </p><p>  <em>Just his best friend absentmindedly tracing words into his only hand. </em></p><p> </p><p> Bucky and Steve have just a little time to themselves. They spend it exactly how you'd think.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Negative Space

**Author's Note:**

> This is pure sap and pure smut, 'cause I needed both. And a little sad. It just sneaked in there.

The decision was instant, but the process wasn't. So now he was waiting. The events of the last few days rang in his ears in the quiet room they'd given him to collect himself, a kindness that touched him too deeply for words. They seemed to understand. Was it too much to hope that someone might?

It didn't matter. He knew what he had to do. He lay on the soft, narrow bed they'd given him, crisp white sheets slowly wrinkling under his back with the balls of his bare feet pressed into the floor. The room was full of gleaming chrome and matte white surfaces, exactly what the future was supposed to look like according to the pulp novels of his childhood. 

The future was nothing like he'd thought it would be, all those years ago.

His arm hurt. There wasn't a lot to do in the room, and he didn't feel comfortable leaving it, not knowing what he might do, so in lieu of something to occupy himself he stared at the stump where the old arm had been. He didn't mind the pain, actually. It was a strange feeling, unpleasant and shooting and phantom, but it was almost a good hurt, for all that it was a pain that finally made sense. Of course it hurt. His arm was missing.

But it had been missing for seventy years, and only now did it _feel_ like it was gone. Now the outside matched the inside, not the Winter Soldier with his tools, but Bucky Barnes, missing a few things but still surviving. 

He tapped his fingers over his leg in a rolling rhythm, switching between songs like a faulty radio, whatever came to mind. He let it wander. 

Steve. Steve was here. God, he'd been so desperate to get away from him, drowning in more feelings than he'd been permitted to acknowledge in decades. He'd needed time. He hadn't realized, until he'd seen him, how badly he'd missed his damn face. 

There'd been so many faces the last few days. Steve had a life here. He'd _made_ a life here, one that Bucky had read about in museums and in newspapers, sweeping up crumbs like a skulking, starving mouse, clutching them back to his dank little mouse hole. It wasn't the same, wasn't anything like feeling his presence, soaking up his attention, watching other people react to him and look up to him. He'd never gotten over that, really, watching Steve in command. It felt so right. He remembered now. 

It was a life that Bucky might or might not find a place in. He didn't know what the future held, couldn't even pretend to guess, but he could see that much. Steve was rescuing them right now, regrouping, pulling his people in close. Steve was dependable that way.

Bucky wanted that. There was a time, so long ago, when he'd been steady, sturdy, dependable. A rock. For the first time in decades, when he closed his eyes, he could see it. Whether it was possible or not didn't matter as much as the fact that it felt real. It felt ... like something he could maybe have again. Someday. A piece of himself that he could get back. He could be depended on. The first step was this. Whatever was next, that would come later, who knew how much. But for the first time, the choice was his.

He'd left the door open a crack; when the footsteps began down the hall and grew louder, he knew that it was intentional, knew who it had to be. He didn't bother opening his eyes when they stopped in the doorway and the door slid open with a whisper of sound.

"You get everyone? They alright?"

"I got everyone," Steve said. "They'll be okay."

Bucky huffed what he thought must be a laugh. Steve still had his Captain voice on. Maybe he couldn't always turn it off anymore. Maybe it was like a hot cast iron skillet that needed time to cool down, so much residual energy stored and waiting, waiting for contact. Back in the war, he didn't turn it on and off at will so much as that on was such a natural part of him, and despite what his men and the Army and the world asked of him, it was never more than he could give, a seemingly endless well of determination.

He'd given much more than that by now. Maybe it occupied a bigger part of him these days. Hard to shut off what's keeping you going.

Steve didn't respond. He shifted his weight, imperceptible by sound, but Bucky could tell. When he opened his eyes just a fraction, he saw it, Steve leaning into the door frame, shifting from heel to toe and back. He looked worse for wear, dirty, bruised. His head hung, but his shoulders were tight with tension like a crowbar couldn't pry his crossed arms from his chest. 

Bucky turned and swung his legs up onto the bed, rolled over until he was next to the wall. It was awkward with one arm, but it wasn't like he'd never had to function with the prosthetic arm compromised or disabled before. He threw himself a little far when he overcompensated, forgetting, for a moment, how much the arm had weighed. It was harder when he stood and felt off-balance, but he knew he'd manage. It wasn't like he'd carried that weight forever. 

Steve took the silent invitation, softly closing the door before crossing the small room in just a few slow, dragging steps. He started to sit down, but he paused, raising his feet one at a time to look at his boots and suddenly seeming to realize what a mess he was.

He hesitated. 

"I don't mind," Bucky assured. "Your feet can't smell any worse now than they did sharing a tent with you in July."

Steve snorted. He got his boots off in a few efficient motions, dropped his jacket over the back of the chair beside the bed (bolted to the floor as he'd requested, just like the bed and table), and fluttered his fingers over the button on his jeans before apparently thinking better of it.

"I'm trying to be a polite house guest," Bucky grumbled. "If there's rubble on those pants, don't take it into my bed. What are they gonna think of me if I leave this place a mess?"

Steve didn't laugh. He bit his lip, though, like maybe he was fighting the instinct to, debating with himself, now that the adrenaline was gone and no one's life was depending on his actions, on what was okay to say. He took his pants off and lay them over the chair next to the jacket. 

Standing there in his shorts and a gray t-shirt, looking down at Bucky with a penetrating somberness to his gaze, he didn't look like the Captain America that Bucky had been getting to know through his various museum crawls at all. He looked almost as tired as Bucky felt, like he could sleep for another seventy years and it wouldn't be enough. Like maybe he'd been afraid to close his eyes for a long time, too.

The moment passed and Steve lay down beside him, staring up at the ceiling instead. He knew Steve realized what it meant, that he'd given him the outside. The bed creaked beneath them, not like the beds of their youth, where it always felt one good rattle away from dropping you into the floor beneath you, but quietly, almost a comforting sound.

"Can this bed support two super soldiers?" he asked.

"Wakandan finest," Steve said, voice a rumbled monotone from deep in his chest. "Bet you could launch a rocket off this thing."

"We did drop some weight."

Steve glanced over at him, barely turning his head to narrow his eyes at him. "That's not funny."

"S'my arm." He nudged Steve with his shoulder, fingers itching to reach for Steve's but not quite making their way across the two inch gulf between them. "Your face'll freeze that way."

Steve looked at him some more, drinking in the sight of him just as surely as Bucky was for him, and then without a word slipped his fingers into Bucky's waiting hand.

Bucky relaxed in ways he hadn't even realized he was still tense. He'd always been the demonstrative one between them, the physical one, the affectionate one. 

He squeezed hard.

"I know why you're doing it."

He waited a while to answer, watching Steve's chest rise and fall, listening to his steady, even breaths. "Are we gonna talk about it?"

"No. Not really."

Steve squeezed back, then starting tracing patterns into his palm with the tips of his fingers, and that's when tears sprung to Bucky's eyes, just a bit, just at the corners. God, it had just been so long. So long since he'd been touched, just for the sake of it, not incidental or violent or clinical. Just as Bucky Barnes, with no real purpose, no intent.

Just his best friend absentmindedly tracing words into his only hand. 

He rolled over onto his side, toward the wall, dragging Steve's arm around with him until he was cocooned under Steve's bulk.

Steve was a furnace at his back, breathing warm, moist air into his hair. His arm hung heavy and limp over Bucky's chest, but his fingers stayed firmly entwined with Bucky's, clutched together over his heart. He felt Steve's pulse. Steve probably felt his.

After maybe half an hour of laying together, quietly breathing and not talking, he felt Steve carefully pulling his hips away to reposition himself. And he had felt why. 

"Steve," he said suddenly, voice shockingly loud in the silence, "wait."

Steve froze.

"Is there something you could do for me?" He looked over his shoulder, right into Steve's face so close to his. He did have green in his eyes this close. Bucky already knew that. 

Steve sat up a little on one arm, practically leaning over him now. "Whatever I can, Buck."

"Do ... Do you remember Marseille?"

"The first time or the second?"

"The second."

Steve's heart skipped a beat, pulsing right up into Bucky's fingers still keeping time on his wrist. "I remember."

"Could you do that for me?"

Steve's eyes closed suddenly, like a sharp pain had shot through him, and maybe it had, but in an instant he opened them again and leaned his forehead down to Bucky's. "I can do that."

He rolled smoothly out of bed and tugged his pants on. "I'll have to be right back. I, uh." He shrugged, mouth tugging up into that little self-effacing grin. "I don't keep anything on me these days."

"What, not even just in case?"

"There hasn't been a 'just in case' in a while, Buck." On that note, he slipped through the door.

Bucky undressed while Steve was gone. His mixed feelings about his arm weren't all bad, but those were private, and it didn't mean he necessarily wanted an audience while he struggled to pull his clothes off one-handed. 

Steve was back in just a few minutes holding a small bottle and a stack of towels. 

"Do I want to know what that is?" Bucky asked from his position on the bed, stripped naked and flat on his back with his feet planted and his knees bent. He looked at Steve upside down.

He coughed. "They're very well-stocked here."

He decided that that meant no, he didn't want to know. Steve stripped his pants back off, and then the shirt, but his fingers lingered on the waistband of his shorts. He looked down at Bucky. "This is what you want?"

Bucky nodded. "I do."

Without further ado, Steve dropped his shorts and stepped out of them, then settled on the bed on his knees next to Bucky. He held out his hand and Bucky grabbed it to pull himself up so Steve could lay some towels down beneath him, rolling over onto his front when he lay back down.

Whatever was in the bottle was warmer than he expected when Steve dribbled some out onto the small of his back. It puddled there before Steve started slipping his fingers through it, drawing them out in an arc and then swooping back down.

"You're in a lot of museums," he said suddenly.

Steve's sliding fingers barely faltered, instead rubbing more insistently into his shoulder. "So are you."

"It's fucking weird."

"It is fucking weird."

"I like it, though." He settled deeper into the bed, thinking about Steve's warmth over his legs, the weight of him solid and comforting. "I like seeing the good stuff people say about you."

"It's not all flattering."

He snorted. "I don't know where you've been living, pal, but it's never been all that flattering. Nicer than it used to be, though."

"Yeah, I suppose." He settled a little lower, finally letting his weight rest on Bucky. His cock was soft where it nestled into the curve where Bucky's buttock met his thigh. It stirred a bit as Steve worked, but Steve paid it no mind and Bucky's didn't particularly react much either. He just liked the feel of Steve against him for the moment.

Steve's slippery fingers slid down to the base of his spine, the crest of his hips, thumbs pressing in tiny circles. "I didn't look at them right away, when I woke up. I waited." His fingertips skipped down the notches of his vertebrae for a moment, almost playful. "It was too much. I was just ... too angry to really take it all in."

Bucky tried to imagine that, Steve Rogers so angry at the world that he wasn't sure he even wanted to be a part of it. He'd always been an angry little guy, simmering under his skin, always ready to call upon his steam reserves when he needed them. But he'd never been consumed by it. It sounded wrong.

"I guess it was a process. You can only be sad for so long before you realize that the sadness is just an emptiness, and the negative spaces get filled with something." His fingers trailed lower, down to the swell of Bucky's ass, and gentled in their motions. "I tried to fill them with something that I could live with."

Bucky reached back until he found one of Steve's hands and interlaced their fingers again. It was an awkward, uncomfortable position, but he held on for a few seconds, and then he pulled Steve's slick hand under him, leaving it pressed into his chest. Steve sat back and nudged him to roll over. 

The towels stuck to his back, clingy and wet. He spread his legs around Steve to pull him in closer, planting his feet on either side of him. Steve poured more of the stuff onto his belly, and Bucky finally noticed that it smelled very faintly floral, a little like bark and grass and a little like flowers. It definitely smelled better than Steve, who clearly had come to Bucky straight from his rescue mission, not stopping to shower or even clean up a little. He didn't mind.

Steve watched his hands while he resumed his ministrations, not Bucky's face, and Bucky found that it was easier. It was permission to watch without being seen, and he hadn't realized that he needed it. Steve's big hands massaged his abdomen, up his sides, over his ribs. He skated over his nipples to rub high on his chest, up into his neck, and then straight back down his sternum to his navel. He backed up a little to rub Bucky's thighs, back to his hips, fingers tracing his hipbones for a brief, tender moment before he pushed his hands straight back up to rub and squeeze his way down Bucky's arm. 

He was oiled all over now, covered in the stuff, and just finally closing his eyes when Steve shocked a sound out of him that he hadn't made in seventy years.

He barked out a laugh, squirming away for a second.

Steve froze, looking up.

"So I'm still ticklish," he said, breathing hard, a few stray giggles bubbling up through his lips. "Good to know."

Steve's whole body sagged with his sigh of relief. Instead of starting up again, he leaned over, kissing Bucky's palm, slowly kissing all the way up his arm, up his neck. When he reached Bucky's face, his lips were shiny with the oil, the smell stronger up close, almost sweet. 

Bucky went to wipe a stray smear of oil off of Steve's chin, but remembered too late that he was covered, too. Soon it was all over Steve's face, and he laughed again, something tight in his chest springing loose. He rubbed his thumb over Steve's cheek, laughing some more, and then again just because he could. 

"We could try wrestling," he breathed. "See who comes out on top."

"I already have my orders," Steve whispered back, eyes flicking back and forth as he looked at Bucky.

"I know how much you love following orders. You'd never dream of disobeying one, right?"

The fond look Steve shot at him was almost overwhelming. Before Bucky could respond, Steve leaned in, face slipping over his before he found purchase on his lips and kissed him for all he was worth. 

His eyes were still open when Bucky closed his. He hadn't realized how he'd leaned up to meet him until he started to sink back down, and Steve followed. One of Steve's hands moved up to cup the back of his neck, the other sliding down to finally play at one nipple, slow and soft.

Steve turned over onto his hip, sidled up into Bucky's side, lips never leaving his. They stayed like that for a while, making out like they were sixteen again, before Bucky skated his fingers up into Steve's hair and scratched over his scalp.

Steve moaned low in his chest, like Bucky had given him a hot cup of soup in the dead of winter. Like he'd found home on the horizon after a long, long walk, and he was almost there. 

His lips trailed down Bucky's neck, to his chest, tongue flicking out to first one nipple, then the other, moving sedately. By the time he'd poured himself down to lap at Bucky's navel, they were both finally stirring to hardness, but neither made any move to do anything about it. 

Steve sucked a hard kiss into his jutting hipbone, finally pulling a rasping groan from Bucky. He gently kissed the bruise he'd left, then went and did it to the other side, back and forth, until he reached the middle of Bucky's lower belly, and licked one long, wide stripe back up to Bucky's chest, and did it all again. On his next pass he wrapped a loose hand around Bucky, practically more of a massage than anything else.

Bucky smiled, lazy and soft, and rolled over onto his side away from Steve. There was something about Steve maneuvering his bulk behind Bucky on the narrow bed that felt right. No matter how big the world outside was, here they were, inside, still squeezing together, still occupying this single space, at least for these few moments in time. 

He wanted to leave his hand free, but he'd realized quickly that the stump of his left arm was too uncomfortable to lay on, and so he supported himself on his right side, leaving his left side wide open and vulnerable. He wasn't nervous about it, but it was still a strange thing to be aware of. He took a deep breath and pulled his knee up to his chest, stabilizing his center of gravity and exposing himself even more.

Steve snugged up even closer behind him, slick fingers gliding right down. He took his time skimming over Bucky's ass, cupping his cheeks and palming over his sides, before he finally started to leisurely work him open.

Steve's other arm was pillowing his head, his hand rubbing circles on the inside of Bucky's wrist. His heartbeat was a steady thrum under Bucky's ear.

It felt good, honestly, sensual and electric in all the right spots, that old familiar pleasure building in all the familiar places, but it was honeyed and heavy, slow-motion and drowsy. It was good, but he almost didn't even care that he was hard. 

He was almost surprised out of his relaxed revery when Steve's cock finally rested against him, poised to slip in. He pulled Steve's arm tighter against him, and Steve rocked into him, small measured thrusts until he was flush.

Steve huffed little breaths into his hair. "This was the second time, right?"

Bucky laughed, forcing a strangled noise out of Steve when his body moved around him, muscles contracting and releasing. "Maybe it's in a history book somewhere."

"God, I hope not."

Steve adjusted himself behind Bucky for a few seconds, getting more comfortable, kissing Bucky's neck and shoulder, reaching over to touch Bucky with his free hand, and they didn't try to talk anymore. They just stayed together, pressed tight, rocking and pushing, until Bucky barely knew where he ended and Steve began.

Later, still wrapped around each other but completely spent, Steve still idly touching him everywhere he could reach, so much clingier than Bucky remembered, Bucky turned to him. "Thank you. For not trying to talk me out of it."

"That's not my job."

"What is, then?"

"Keeping you safe. Finding a way to undo this. I have some ideas. Know some people who know a thing or two about minds."

Bucky kissed him. "However it shakes out ... you should know ..." He leaned back a little until he could look Steve in the eye. "You're still a punk."

"With a rap sheet, too."

Bucky looked at the sorry sight of the two of them, filthy and slippery, bruised and damaged, and his eyes lit on the scar on Steve's hand he doubted anyone ever noticed. It was so small, stretched a little funny after he'd grown. Steve had slammed his hand down on an old nail while they were screwing around in an old building. He didn't even remember why they'd gone in now. He just remembered looking down at Steve on his knees, losing himself to the feel of it, and then Steve's irritated little yelp when his palm hit the windowsill. Thing had bled everywhere. Steve wrapped it up in a handkerchief and convinced Bucky to let him finish. Compared to the scars on Bucky and the ones he'd left on Steve when he wasn't himself, it wasn't much, but just being able to look down and find it, this small, almost imperceptible thing, left him fond and hopeful.

He'd find his way into Steve's new life. He'd build a new one for himself. He knew that. 

But he hadn't followed Steve for nothing all that time. They had more in common than age.

"You gotta be hungry after your prison break," he said, still drowsy but slowly coming to from the pleasant haze he'd been in. "The room service at this place is pretty great. They should be stopping by any time now."

Steve did his sad little grimace of a smile, probably at the reminder that Bucky had confined himself to this room, but he grabbed a couple of towels and tossed one to Bucky. "I could eat." 

"It's nice of them, you know, doing all of this for me. He didn't have to."

Steve wrapped his arm around Bucky's shoulder and leaned in close, resting his head against him. "We're all duty-bound."

Bucky squeezed Steve's shoulder and stood up, feeling too loose to let the sadness in. "It's not my last meal, Rogers. Don't get maudlin on me now."

Steve swallowed hard, and when he looked up, he was smiling that patented Steve Rogers half-smile. "Wouldn't dream of it." And with that, he casually pulled Bucky back into bed.


End file.
